Newark Shootings Part of National Trend
"I'm really petrified to even walk down the street," says one victim's friend.
Aug. 13, 2007 — -- A week after the brutal slaying of three Newark, N.J., college students, the community is still in shock.
"I'm really petrified to even walk down the street," said Brianna Jolley, a friend of one of the victims.
Dashon Harvey was just 20 years old. The psychology major at Delaware State University was an aspiring model and described as fun-loving and respectful.
"I couldn't believe it, not my boy," said Harvey's father, James, recalling the night his son was killed. "Why? For what? Who did it? Why would they want to do that? I can't fathom that. I can't believe that," he said.
"[I've] got to buy him a suit for burial instead of his graduation and that's a shock to me."
Harvey and his friends Terrance Aerial, 18, and Iofemi Hightower, 20, were forced to kneel down and were shot execution style at a school playground. Aerial's sister Natasha, 19, was shot and stabbed, but survived the attack.
In many of the nation's cities such violence is hardly unique.
Last year, murders were up a disturbing 6.7 percent in cities with a million or more residents. Additionally, according to the FBI, there were more than 670,000 assaults with firearms between 2001 and 2005.
"If you ask people what was the reason for violence in the '90s, it was almost universally crack cocaine. Today it is much more complicated than that," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum.
"What we are seeing today is the re-emergence of a number of key factors," Wexler said. "You have gangs out there. You have a higher percentage of juveniles. You have over 600,000 people coming out of prison and you've got a lot of guns out on the street, higher-level guns, all coming together in a combustible mixture."
Recent crimes across the United States, in addition to the murders in Newark, illustrate the problem.
In Oakland, Calif., a newspaper editor was fatally shot Aug. 2, just before a bloody weekend in which seven other people were killed in gunfire. Philadelphia is surging toward a 10-year high in homicides.
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